The Candice Malcolm Show - Keean Bexte and Candice Malcolm REACT to French Debate, Scrum, CBC MELTDOWN

00:00:00.080 Young Canadian women say they're putting off kids because they can't afford them. 1.00

00:00:05.480 But Mark Carney wants 100 million people, not for families, for the machine.

00:00:12.240 No homes, no hope, and no future.

00:00:15.680 Just growth at any cost.

00:00:18.880 Not to build Canada, but to change it.

00:00:30.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:33.360 We have a great episode for you today.

00:00:35.320 We're going to get to the French language debates a little later in the show.

00:00:39.160 The debate was really interesting.

00:00:40.360 I think Pierre Paulyev won the debate.

00:00:42.000 I think Yves-Francois Blanchet also won the debate.

00:00:44.200 We're going to talk about that later.

00:00:45.200 First, I want to talk about the post-debate scrum, because for independent media, this

00:00:50.400 is our time to shine.

00:00:52.200 And so to talk about that with me today, I have Kian Bexton, my co-founder at Juno News,

00:00:56.160 and the man that was first in line to ask Mark Carney a question last night.

00:01:00.360 Kian, welcome to the show.

00:01:02.120 Thanks for having me.

00:01:03.360 OK, so walk us through it.

00:01:04.760 First of all, how did you get to the front of the line?

00:01:06.800 And tell us any interesting tidbits about what it was like behind the scenes of the debate.

00:01:11.320 Yeah, so it was not my first rodeo.

00:01:12.800 This is the third leaders debate that we attended.

00:01:15.080 Obviously, we sued the commission three election cycles ago so that we could get access, because

00:01:23.760 this is kind of the one chance every four years we have to speak to the leaders of

00:01:28.400 our country.

00:01:29.400 Pierre has been a little bit more open with us, but, you know, Erin O'Toole was not.

00:01:33.680 Andrew Scheer was not.

00:01:35.880 And Justin Trudeau certainly was not.

00:01:37.640 Mark Carney is showing up to be more of the same, where they use the tools of the state,

00:01:41.600 the RCMP buildings, access and other limitations so that only people like Rosemary Barton and David

00:01:48.160 Cochran get to ask them questions.

00:01:50.920 Now, I thought my question was pretty reasonable.

00:01:53.960 I, you know, I had a long list of questions I wanted to ask Mark Carney, all the way from

00:01:59.640 Jelaine Maxwell and his relationship with her to his tax documents that nobody can seem to

00:02:05.000 find in 2022 to maybe what he spoke about with Xi Jinping in 2024 when he was advising Trudeau

00:02:13.000 and had some weird secret meeting with the president of the Communist Party of China.

00:02:17.560 But I landed on a pretty fair question that I, you know, I actually thought of it right

00:02:22.120 before I came up to the microphone.

00:02:24.360 And I asked, I mean, I guess we can play, but I asked, do you think Justin Trudeau was a

00:02:28.600 good prime minister?

00:02:29.240 Because he's really been trying to distance himself from Justin Trudeau.

00:02:32.920 He's this new guy, but Justin Trudeau was so great.

00:02:35.880 So he's still trying to maintain the support that Justin Trudeau had.

00:02:39.960 And he can't really outright say, no, Justin Trudeau was a disaster, which 70% of Canadians,

00:02:45.240 more than 70% of Canadians agree. 0.59

00:02:46.920 Justin Trudeau was an absolute disaster. 0.90

00:02:49.160 By the end of his term, they thought he was a disgrace. 0.97

00:02:51.400 He should resign.

00:02:52.200 And he would have lost this election resoundingly if he was the one running.

00:02:55.960 So what Mark Carney's thoughts on him are is extremely material to this election.

00:03:02.360 And when the CBC and all of these pundits and losers who are paid way too much to spew 0.98

00:03:07.880 their garbage say that our question was unreasonable. 0.98

00:03:11.320 I mean, Alex Zoltan of True North came after me. 0.97

00:03:13.800 We'll get to that.

00:03:14.360 We'll get to that.

00:03:14.920 But let's stick to your question, Kian, because you're right. 0.99

00:03:17.560 Let's play the clip because I want to show, first of all, I was a little surprised.

00:03:20.840 I thought you were going to ask a spicier question. 1.00

00:03:23.000 But the question you asked was completely professional, completely reasonable.

00:03:26.600 I was actually surprised that no one had ever asked that to Mark Carney.

00:03:29.160 And you could tell by his response, he didn't have a canned answer.

00:03:32.200 Right.

00:03:32.440 Like no one had ever asked him that question.

00:03:34.360 And that in and of itself is valuable journalism.

00:03:37.160 Right.

00:03:37.400 The fact that you thought of a question that no one else thought just shows why it's important

00:03:41.800 to have freedom of the press so that you have different kinds of journalists that think

00:03:45.240 differently from different parts of the country with different backgrounds and to try to get the

00:03:49.400 leader to answer honestly.

00:03:51.080 Right.

00:03:51.400 When they're just asked the same questions that they're asked from the CBC day in and day out,

00:03:55.080 he develops talking points and canned answers.

00:03:57.720 And so you're not getting a real authentic reaction.

00:04:00.600 You're just getting the sort of PR version of the campaign.

00:04:03.880 And that's what we're trying to avoid.

00:04:05.160 So let's let's play this clip.

00:04:07.160 This is Kian Bexty.

00:04:08.200 You were the first one.

00:04:09.320 Well, technically, you were the second question questioner.

00:04:11.800 There's two microphone lineups.

00:04:13.800 And so the other the first question went to the other side.

00:04:16.680 And then and then this is Kian last night asking the question.

00:04:20.840 Hi, Mr.

00:04:21.400 Kearney, Kian Bexty, Juneau News.

00:04:23.320 In your estimation, was Justin Trudeau a good prime minister?

00:04:27.960 Yeah, Justin Trudeau and the previous administration made a number of contributions to this country.

00:04:36.440 I suspect since I have 10 minutes, I think, right, for the responses, I'm not going to enumerate them all.

00:04:42.360 I'll make one point which I think is relevant on the way looking forward, which is, as I said the other night in an interview,

00:04:49.960 he and I, we share the same values in terms of solidarity, taking care of one each one another.

00:04:56.200 The emphasis on reconciliation, emphasis on equality of all Canadians and building a better country for everyone else.

00:05:04.760 The difference, one of the differences, there are many, but one of the differences between the two of us goes to the question I was just asked,

00:05:10.840 which is I put much more emphasis on the economy, on growing the economy.

00:05:15.160 In fact, in this circumstance that we're in, given the scale of the crisis and what needs to be done,

00:05:20.920 I would say a relentless focus on growing the economy to work for all Canadians.

00:05:25.720 Some say the bubbles in an aero truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.

00:05:30.440 Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.

00:05:33.160 Rich, creamy, chocolatey aero truffle.

00:05:37.080 Feel the aero bubbles melt.

00:05:39.080 It's mind bubbling.

00:05:41.160 So you can see that he kind of eventually got to where he wanted to go, which was,

00:05:44.760 yes, I have the same values as Justin Trudeau, but I'm better at managing the economy, basically.

00:05:50.020 And if he had been asked that question 10 times on the campaign trail, that's what he would have said.

00:05:53.420 But the telling part was the ums, uh, uh, and it did remind me, I mentioned this on our live stream last night,

00:05:57.980 but there was a really important part in the U.S. 2024 election when Kamala Harris went on The View, right?

00:06:03.080 She wasn't doing any difficult interviews throughout the campaign.

00:06:05.560 She went into a friendly environment, kind of let her guard down.

00:06:07.800 And a very simple question from Sonny Hauston was, what would you do differently than Joe Biden?

00:06:12.440 And she couldn't think of anything.

00:06:13.800 She couldn't think of a single thing.

00:06:14.920 And that in and of itself was newsworthy because it's like, okay, so she's not differentiating herself from Joe Biden.

00:06:20.100 And I sort of got that from Carney last night that he, he knew that he should say, no, uh, he knew that he should say distance myself from Trudeau because everybody hates him.

00:06:29.160 Um, but he couldn't because he believes in so many of the same things as Justin Trudeau and he holds the same values and he wants everyone to know that he's equally as left-wing as Justin Trudeau.

00:06:38.600 And so to me, that was just such a fantastic, wonderful question.

00:06:42.280 What, uh, what was your response and reaction to that?

00:06:45.080 Well, I, I did ask a follow-up where I sort of detailed how, well, okay, you think he's great.

00:06:50.380 And it, it, it, it sort of shows because you've kept all of his teams surrounding you, uh, you've kept the guy that released, um, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, released Paul Bernardo from maximum security prison.

00:07:06.600 Uh, you've made him your chief of staff.

00:07:09.180 You know, this was wildly unpopular.

00:07:10.680 He made the person who made his life's work, the carbon tax, Stephen Gilbeau, his Lieutenant in Quebec and Terry Guion, Justin Trudeau's media enforcer.

00:07:19.780 Who, I don't know if he's going to be staying along, uh, around very long.

00:07:23.600 I've heard rumors that he might be on the way out, but for now he's, uh, he, he's Mark Carney's media enforcer.

00:07:30.500 So he has this full team, uh, front and that's, I mean, those are the, those are the higher ups.

00:07:35.080 His entire cabinet and caucus all the way down are almost identical to Justin Trudeau.

00:07:40.560 So the question really is like, sure, the leader might've changed, but you know, the, the, the caucus doesn't change their beliefs.

00:07:48.000 He's not changing their ideology.

00:07:49.680 He's not changing their belief system.

00:07:51.700 Leopards don't change their spots as they say.

00:07:54.060 And, you know, Justin Trudeau had these guys walking in lockstep with him.

00:07:58.240 They were, they were his biggest fans for a decade.

00:08:01.180 They're not just going to be like, oh yeah, now we need to get serious about the economy. 0.58

00:08:04.500 Uh, now that Mark Carney's the leader and we're going to leave all of this crazy garbage that the country hates, like the carbon tax.

00:08:10.480 You know, even one of, I was going to get to this, if I could have asked another question, one of, uh, one of Mark Carney's candidates said yesterday that she couldn't promise that the carbon tax would never come back.

00:08:21.740 Meaning that, yeah, it's paused for now because it's electorally unpopular, but just you wait, give us a majority.

00:08:29.080 And in year two, we're going to go back to the same old garbage that we've been doing for the last decade.

00:08:34.900 There really is no difference between this liberal party and Justin Trudeau's liberal party. 0.54

00:08:38.760 It's just that this guy has a new smile.

00:08:41.740 Right. Okay. Well, we have the second clip.

00:08:43.240 So this is Kian Bexley's follow-up question.

00:08:45.580 You're given one question, one follow-up.

00:08:47.300 And here is where he details similar to what he just said.

00:08:50.180 Now, the interesting thing from me, Kian, is again, Mark Carney's reaction because he hasn't really clued into the fact that you're not part of the media guard.

00:08:57.620 Like, I think he just probably assumed that any journalist ever asking a question has been screened by the CBC.

00:09:01.860 Their questions have been vetted by his campaign, so he's never going to get a new question, specifically not a big night like tonight.

00:09:06.760 Like, maybe it was a break-in.

00:09:08.040 So you can see Mark Carney kind of saying, like, I haven't seen you at my press events.

00:09:12.920 Well, of course, because he's had Kian banned and arrested when Kian has tried to come to his campaign events. 0.99

00:09:18.940 And then he actually says...

00:09:19.720 I didn't like the spot when I said, well, yeah, because you've been kicking me out.

00:09:23.340 I said that under my breath.

00:09:24.360 I didn't think that that was going to be a problem.

00:09:25.920 But it was pretty...

00:09:26.400 My mom texted me afterwards.

00:09:27.820 She's like, we all heard you.

00:09:29.020 Yeah, I mean, the internet heard you too, Kian.

00:09:32.120 Okay, let's play that clip.

00:09:33.360 And yes, pay close attention to the hot mic with Kian and Carney's sort of bewilderment that someone was asking a question that he hadn't been pre-approved from him.

00:09:44.160 Let's play that clip.

00:09:44.700 Your entire campaign does seem to be predicated on putting you in the front and hiding the people that stood in lockstep with Justin Trudeau for the last 10 years.

00:09:54.360 You're kind of hoping that Canadians won't connect the dots that the people standing behind you in your caucus walked in lockstep with him.

00:10:00.520 Regardless of what you say right now, Stephen Gobeau made the carbon taxes life work.

00:10:04.760 The man that moved Paul Bernardo from a maximum security prison is now your chief of staff.

00:10:09.540 I'm wondering how you reconcile this and how you can trust their judgment when they thought those ideas were good ideas.

00:10:14.760 I'd say a couple of things to that rather odd question.

00:10:18.220 First is that the candidates in this election for the Liberal Party, I mean, you go and see when I make an announcement.

00:10:26.400 I don't think I've seen you at any of them, but next time you can come.

00:10:29.340 And you will see a wide range of the candidates that are there presenting themselves.

00:10:35.560 So, for example, with respect to our announcement on crime, we had Bill Blair, now the Minister of Defence, of course, formerly the chief of police and a long time in Toronto.

00:10:46.780 And Natalie Provo, who is a new candidate, we're honoured to have her, and someone who's dedicated their life to helping to end gun violence and violence against women.

00:10:59.980 There is a very wide range of candidates that have come to the party with me.

00:11:04.740 There's a lot of fresh blood.

00:11:06.420 There's also a lot of experience that's there.

00:11:08.560 And you need that combination of energy, new ideas, experience, and a fundamental passion for making this country better in order to serve at this crucial time.

00:11:19.660 Thank you very much.

00:11:21.180 You know, this is the first time that I'm actually re-watching this, and he actually did quietly there say, next time you can come.

00:11:29.920 Yeah, I know.

00:11:30.580 I put it on X at the time because I said, I think he just gave you an invitation.

00:11:34.220 I think you should try to use that to get in because the thing about Carney is he's trying to be likable and he's trying to be reasonable.

00:11:40.800 And again, I don't think that, like, his staff adequately warned him that at the leaders debate, independent media are allowed to ask questions.

00:11:48.440 And so he, I mean, his answer is interesting, too, because he was trying to emphasise the new blood.

00:11:53.360 And I think he named one candidate that was new and then also named Bill Blair and basically tried to emphasise, like, that he is different.

00:12:00.780 And then, yeah, just in that little kind of, like, back and forth between you, he seemed, like, friendly to the idea that you should be able to come to his events, which makes me think that, to your earlier point, maybe it's not even Mark Carney that's banning you and other independent media from his events.

00:12:14.680 It's, like, the Trudeau holdover staff that are, like, so ingrained in this idea that conservatives and independent journalists are the enemy and that under no circumstances can they get anywhere near a leader.

00:12:27.360 What do you think?

00:12:27.800 Yeah, I'm going to have to take him up on that offer and go.

00:12:33.900 I have a feeling I know how this is going to turn out.

00:12:37.540 But, you know, there's, I've been, I've been sort of gauging the temperature and the response.

00:12:43.420 And, you know, the response from the mainstream media has just been breathless.

00:12:47.300 You know, they're furious because after I did that, you know, there was about half a dozen independent journalists that asked really, really prickly questions.

00:12:56.620 And I'm wondering if there's, like, if there's a sweet spot here where we can ask questions that are serious, that our viewers want answers to, that would never be asked by the mainstream media but aren't so stinging that they'll let us back in so we can keep doing it.

00:13:15.360 Because it's not so much about the stunt every four years.

00:13:19.380 These questions are important.

00:13:20.440 And if we're able to ask them in a professional way that even when the viewers see it, they say, yeah, you know, that's a fair question.

00:13:27.540 And that's honestly been, I mean, there's some crazy liberals that have been saying Kean shouldn't be allowed near a microphone anywhere, which, you know, they're never going to change their mind.

00:13:35.360 But these moderates, these centerists are saying, well, you know, Kean's question actually was pretty legitimate given, you know, I could list the questions that I had prepared that I could have asked and they would have stung.

00:13:45.980 But I decided that this was probably better and I'm glad that we did because, you know, maybe if we can build a relationship with Mark, if he wins, I will, you know, we will not survive another four years if we are not able to hold him to account.

00:14:02.180 If he, you know, if he's governing this country with just him and Rosemary Barton in the room discussing what Canada needs, we're going to have a really big problem.

00:14:10.460 So we need people like Juno News putting a light on him and whatever we need to do to get into these rooms to ask him questions that our viewers and Canadians at large want answers to.

00:14:22.000 We need to do that.

00:14:23.580 Absolutely.

00:14:24.240 Well, we can go through some of the others.

00:14:25.900 I think that Rebel News did a fantastic job when it came to Jagmeet Singh.

00:14:30.120 They were able to get two questions to him.

00:14:32.320 Trey Humphrey asked a really, really strong question about anti-Christian, like, hatred, burning down churches. 0.97

00:14:41.340 Jagmeet just made an absolute fool of himself, refusing to answer. 0.99

00:14:44.660 I do want to play Alex Zoltan's clip, though, because he was able to ask two questions just like you. 0.91

00:14:50.220 His questions were more prickly.

00:14:51.640 They were on one of these divisive social issues.

00:14:53.560 And I think your point, right, if we lived in a normal country where there was press freedom, True North and Juno News and the Rebel, the Counter Signal, we would be able to ask questions of the leaders day in and day out, right?

00:15:05.400 And so our questions wouldn't feel so out of place and they wouldn't be so shocking to people if it was just an everyday occurrence.

00:15:12.720 But because we only get one shot at this, like, we're going to make sure that the questions count.

00:15:16.800 So here is True North's Alex Zoltan asking Mark Carney how many genders there are and then asking if he supports women-only spaces.

00:15:25.920 Let's play that clip.

00:15:27.020 If you thought my friend's question was odd, you're going to love this one.

00:15:30.040 I'm glad you self-assessed that.

00:15:32.660 Okay.

00:15:33.160 How many genders are there? 1.00

00:15:36.740 In terms of sex, there are two.

00:15:39.720 Thank you.

00:15:41.040 My follow-up question then?

00:15:42.180 Do you believe that women, biological women, have the right to their own spaces, their own sports, their own change rooms, their own prisons, their own homeless shelters? 0.89

00:15:53.240 I think we, this is Canada, and that has a general objective, yes.

00:16:01.580 We, but we work in, where we value all Canadians for who they are and we'll continue to do so.

00:16:12.740 Thank you very much.

00:16:14.560 That was without a doubt the best question of the night.

00:16:17.680 That really exposed Mark Carney for who he was.

00:16:20.940 I mean, I will say he eventually, at least the first one came to the right thing, he said there's two, which I imagine might be controversial to some on the far left people who support him because they believe that there are, I think someone, didn't someone say that they, someone heckled Alex and said there's 27 genders or something like that?

00:16:37.720 Anyway, and then the second question he did not answer.

00:16:40.740 He just said, this is Canada, like kind of in theory, yes, but, and I think he's saying in Canada we accept others, meaning that we need to accept men in women's spaces, basically.

00:16:51.100 So he, he didn't come to a very good answer there.

00:16:53.860 And it is newsworthy.

00:16:55.640 Like I, that was the question that made my phone blow up and people messaging me, friends, former colleagues, people just saying like, thank you, because that is a question that I want to know.

00:17:05.000 And that is a question that is important to me as a mother, you know, with daughters and playing sports and all these kinds of things.

00:17:11.020 Like these are issues that matter to Canada.

00:17:13.180 The journalists don't like it, but, but this is a question that should have been asked to him.

00:17:17.700 The thing is this exact question was asked of Pierre Polyev, the exact question.

00:17:24.640 So, so why is it okay to ask?

00:17:27.000 Well, I mean, I know why, and I'll, I'll say why it's okay to ask Pierre that because it was coming from the perspective of, you must say that there's some like vague third option of, you know, non-binary, two-spirited queerness that you need to accept right now.

00:17:42.640 While I grill you with this important question, that's why that question was okay.

00:17:46.140 When Pierre Polyev was asked it, but when it was asked by Alex Zoltan, it was asked from a different perspective.

00:17:51.140 Now that the world has sort of woken up from this weird fever dream where they think that there's 27 genders.

00:17:56.200 And now it's sort of like culturally appropriate to accept biological reality and know that there is only two.

00:18:02.880 And I don't know what the world was thinking for the last half decade.

00:18:06.100 Now that he's asking the question from that perspective, it's absolutely outrageous, alt-right, crazy, outrageous that you do that.

00:18:13.540 But the average viewer seeing that, there's nothing that could legitimize our cause more than asking these questions in this, in this format right now, which is why the liberals are so furious on Twitter, on Axon, whatever, whatever social media they're using these days when they're coping and seething.

00:18:33.220 And you can tell that they are wounded by the questions that we asked because they were so effective, because we had a national audience.

00:18:40.380 We did our job and it shows because they're so furious.

00:18:44.420 Well, let's get to some of that.

00:18:46.160 So the CBC was covering the event live.

00:18:48.520 You pointed out in our live stream as well, I'll say, you were out in the freezing cold because they wouldn't let you do a call, like a stand-up or an interview from inside the building because the event was hosted at Radio Canada's headquarters, CBC headquarters in Montreal.

00:19:00.420 And so you had to go outside.

00:19:01.720 We saw the nice, beautiful tent that they had created for Rosemary Barton while you were out in the cold.

00:19:06.320 So let's go inside the tent.

00:19:07.780 And here is Rosemary Barton calling us a very right-wing website and adding that it was the debates commission, how dare them, that let us in.

00:19:17.040 Rosie, I'm curious what stood out to you because at one point when some of those last questions came up, I just checked.

00:19:22.140 Yeah, no, we're in Canada.

00:19:23.940 Because these, the identity politics questions have not emerged much in this campaign so far.

00:19:29.420 This happens on the same day that the United Kingdom court ruled that women and sex refer to biological women and biological sex.

00:19:37.220 True North is a very right-wing website.

00:19:41.360 And there have been issues in the past with who gets allowed into these scrums and who's allowed to ask questions of the leaders.

00:19:49.120 The debates commission was the one who decided that these people were allowed to come in and ask these kinds of questions.

00:19:56.560 So there you go.

00:19:57.380 These people, remember when Don Cherry got cancelled for saying that?

00:20:01.300 And there was Rosemary Barton saying it about us.

00:20:04.340 The other journalist that she was talking to, Arsenal, I can't remember her name.

00:20:08.460 She said that she couldn't believe that it was Canada and that these questions, these divisive social questions, were being asked in Canada.

00:20:17.260 And Rosemary Barton said, you know, it was just a few days ago in the UK that the Supreme Court ruled that women are women and men are men, right?

00:20:23.180 So this is an important issue around the world.

00:20:25.400 You mentioned that Pierre Polyev had that question asked to him.

00:20:28.520 I think it was about two months ago or three months ago when President Trump signed an executive order saying men are men and women are women.

00:20:35.300 And then he went on CP24, which is a Toronto news station, and the host asked him how many genders there are, right?

00:20:41.160 And so that was a legitimate question.

00:20:42.840 I want to take us back one year ago in February 2024.

00:20:46.580 Danielle Smith in Alberta announced the ban of sex change operations for children.

00:20:51.880 And the entire parliamentary press gallery ran to ask Pierre Polyev.

00:20:58.180 So I'm just going to play a clip of this scrum.

00:21:00.640 Here they all are asking this question of Pierre Polyev just one year ago.

00:21:07.840 Do you support age restrictions for puberty blockers and hormone therapies for trans kids?

00:21:14.900 I think that Justin Trudeau is trying to divide and distract Canadians by spreading disinformation.

00:21:21.880 about the decisions that premiers and parents are making.

00:21:26.020 I want to know your position.

00:21:28.180 What do you think?

00:21:28.760 I want to know your position.

00:21:30.060 It's your own party policy.

00:21:31.480 It's your own party policy.

00:21:32.900 I think we should protect the rights of parents to make their own decisions.

00:21:36.600 What does it mean?

00:21:37.400 With regards to their children.

00:21:38.680 And I believe that adults should have the freedom to make any decision they want about their bodies.

00:21:43.820 With minors.

00:21:44.820 With minors.

00:21:45.820 With children.

00:21:46.820 I think.

00:21:47.820 With children and medical interventions for minors as your own party members suggested.

00:21:48.820 Medical interventions like what?

00:21:49.820 That is the language that your party used.

00:21:51.820 What medical interventions?

00:21:52.820 Well you would have to ask your party members.

00:21:54.820 What medical interventions?

00:21:55.820 Such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement.

00:21:57.820 For minors?

00:21:58.820 Yes.

00:21:59.820 Irreversible?

00:22:00.820 You're talking about.

00:22:01.820 I would like to understand you.

00:22:02.820 I just want to be clear.

00:22:03.820 No I don't want to be clear.

00:22:04.820 I just want to be clear.

00:22:05.820 Puberty blockers for minors. 0.60

00:22:06.820 Puberty blockers for minors. 0.60

00:22:07.820 Do you agree with that?

00:22:08.820 I think that we should protect children and their ability to make adult decisions when they are adults.

00:22:13.820 So I just played that clip to show you that the entire parliamentary press gallery, you could hear them all shouting.

00:22:19.820 And look, I don't begrudge them for that.

00:22:20.820 That is their job as journalists, to ask questions of our leaders.

00:22:23.820 But my only question is, why is it okay for the entire parliamentary press gallery to be pressing Pierre Pauliev like that?

00:22:30.820 Pushing him, trying to get him, trap him in, answering a question that you could tell he hadn't prepared an answer to.

00:22:36.820 And it takes him a while, but eventually he gets there and says, no, children shouldn't have to, shouldn't be allowed to make decisions, you know, for adults.

00:22:43.820 Adults decisions are for adults.

00:22:45.820 My only question is, why don't they do that to Mark Carney?

00:22:48.820 Like, why is it that we have to know the position when it comes to divisive social issues from the conservative leader?

00:22:54.820 But even just asking any kind of question like this to Mark Carney is just absolutely unacceptable, according to these journalists.

00:23:03.820 Well, it, you, you, you've, you've said it yourself.

00:23:07.820 Uh, it's because they're doing it's they're allowed to, we're not allowed to.

00:23:12.820 They know how effective it is.

00:23:14.820 They've run the country for decades supporting Justin Trudeau by using this playbook, attack the conservatives on social issues and mask liberal insanity as much as possible by using the tricks of the trade to launch softballs at them that are, you know, you know, what kind of shampoo?

00:23:32.820 What kind of shampoo do you use when you're, you have, you're in an airplane with the leader of a G7 country.

00:23:37.820 And that's the question you ask him, uh, it's intentional, you know, that that's how they protect Justin Trudeau for a decade.

00:23:43.820 And they're hoping for another decade with Mark Carney.

00:23:46.820 Uh, and I, I'm not going to play by those rules.

00:23:49.820 Uh, and I, I don't think anyone in Juneau is, and, and rebel news and the Western standard and Epoch times.

00:23:55.820 I don't think that they're going to do.

00:23:56.820 Uh, I don't think that they're going to play by those rules anymore because, uh, the stakes are so high.

00:24:01.820 The stakes are so high now and we know what their game is.

00:24:04.820 We know what the tricks are that they use.

00:24:06.820 And we're going to use, uh, the exact same ones to get answers for our viewers.

00:24:10.820 Because at the end of the day, this isn't about a stunt.

00:24:13.820 This isn't about me.

00:24:14.820 This isn't about Alex Zoltan.

00:24:16.820 This isn't even about Juneau news.

00:24:18.820 It is about our viewers and Canadians at large and getting them results, which means getting them answers to questions that they can't ask themselves.

00:24:28.820 But they're sitting at their dinner table saying, man, you know, I wonder what Mark Carney actually thinks or, or what he, what he would say when he was asked an unscripted question about, you know, should my daughter be able to be guided down this trans pipeline by the school garden guidance counselor?

00:24:46.820 Uh, what does Mark Carney actually think about that?

00:24:48.820 Uh, the, these Canadians want to know an answer to that and many other questions.

00:24:52.820 And, you know, if he wins, we'll have four years to grill him on it.

00:24:55.820 I just hope that he's not going to be using, um, the same tricks that Trudeau used to keep us out, which, you know, given his track record during the campaign, I'm not so, um, bullish on, but I guess we'll see it.

00:25:08.820 I, we do have a recording of him inviting me.

00:25:10.820 So maybe I'll just bring that with me when I go to his press conference.

00:25:14.820 Yeah, show up with it on your phone.

00:25:15.820 Okay.

00:25:16.820 Let's go to a bit more of the reaction.

00:25:17.820 Here is CBC's David Cochran saying that the debates commission must be accountable for daring to allow us in the door.

00:25:24.820 Uh, I, I think the debate commission is going to need to be accountable for what's kind of happening here.

00:25:30.820 They moved the time of the debate the day before they kicked the greens out the morning of, and they've opened up the scrums and the press access.

00:25:37.820 To a bunch of groups who sometimes are registered charities or have been defined by their owner as not actually a journalistic organization or have been ruled by the federal court to not be a journalistic organization.

00:25:48.820 And in an election like this one with very, very substantive debate on very substantive issues, moderated very well and executed very well by all the leaders.

00:25:56.820 This is where this is going.

00:25:58.820 And we've got another clip here.

00:25:59.820 We've got another clip here.

00:26:00.820 This is CBC's senior reporter, Ashley Burke, again, saying that the post-debate scrums were dominated by right wing media groups and basically just saying, like, how dare us, how dare us go and ask questions to play that clip.

00:26:13.820 The leader spoke post-debate in those scrums.

00:26:17.820 What did you hear from those scrums?

00:26:19.820 The post-debate scrums were dominated by right wing media groups who flooded leaders with questions on topics unrelated to the debate.

00:26:26.820 One did ask Carney if he felt Trudeau was a good prime minister.

00:26:29.820 Carney said that he was and that they have shared values, including taking care of Canadians, reconciliation and equality.

00:26:35.820 Interesting that she felt the need to, like, rehash Carney's answer to you, like, to explain to viewers that he don't worry, folks.

00:26:43.820 He did a great job answering Kian Beksi's question.

00:26:45.820 A bit more of the reaction.

00:26:46.820 So we had former cabinet minister for Justin Trudeau, Catherine McKenna, saying, thank you, Jagmeet Singh.

00:26:52.820 This is how you deal with disinformation, peddling, rage farming outlets.

00:26:57.820 Of course, Jagmeet Singh just rather embarrassingly refused to take a very good question from the Rebel News.

00:27:04.820 And to me, he just showed how, like, his intellectual inability to engage with issues that he doesn't understand.

00:27:11.820 We don't have time to get to that as much, but he's just such a joke.

00:27:17.820 Anyway, next we have Ezra Levant, who basically took us behind the scenes a little here.

00:27:23.820 And he writes that at least a dozen other journalists were literally heckling Drea as she asked her question,

00:27:29.820 including Justin Ling, who wrote about Drea's question in the Toronto Star, but forgot to mention that he was shouting at her.

00:27:36.820 OK, so, you know, these these legacy media journalists, you know, they're not exactly unbiased, right?

00:27:43.820 They were there heckling you guys.

00:27:45.820 I'm told that during the debate itself, they were basically laughing and cheering anytime Pierre Polyev got a tough question and were, like, actively cheering on Mark Carney.

00:27:56.820 And then the journalists took their rage from us and shifted it towards the Debates Commission.

00:28:01.820 And so here's Andrew Koinonek saying fire every member of the Debates Commission.

00:28:06.820 Chantal Hebert agreed.

00:28:09.820 Both both of these are at issue panels.

00:28:11.820 She says brought to you by the Debates Commission, a gong show.

00:28:14.820 And then you have Chris Selle of the National Post saying this is the end of the Debates Commission banquet.

00:28:22.820 And finally, Amanda Rose, who I wasn't familiar with this person, she's an entrepreneur. 0.99

00:28:27.820 She writes that watching Rebel News and True North ask bad faith questions after the debate is the best argument for public funding of the CBC.

00:28:35.820 We need journalism, not propaganda.

00:28:38.820 So just quickly here, Kian, like to folks that don't really understand, like, OK, so this is what happened.

00:28:44.820 Prior to Justin Trudeau being prime minister, these debates during the election used to be organized by the private media companies themselves.

00:28:50.820 Right. So CTV might do one. Global might do one.

00:28:53.820 Maclean's might do one.

00:28:54.820 And basically every media company kind of like offers to organize them.

00:28:57.820 And then they see which leaders agree to show up to them.

00:29:00.820 Justin Trudeau, as he did for so many other issues, decided that the government needed to be in charge of this, that even though the free market was doing a perfectly fine job doing it, he wanted the government to take over.

00:29:09.820 So the government took over and they use that to try to ban independent media.

00:29:13.820 And so interestingly, before you and I actually worked together, we teamed up because in 2019 they banned True North Andrew Lawton.

00:29:20.820 And then you were working at the Rebel that time and they banned you as well.

00:29:23.820 And so we decided to sue.

00:29:25.820 Ezra heard that we were suing, called me up, say, we're going to sue too.

00:29:28.820 The courts decided to hear our two cases together.

00:29:31.820 And so we went to Toronto.

00:29:33.820 We had our case heard before a federal judge the day of the debates.

00:29:37.820 Right. And it was happening on a Monday.

00:29:38.820 We were in court that day.

00:29:40.820 And the judge, a federal judge, ruled in our favor and said the government cannot prevent citizen journalists from asking questions of their leader.

00:29:49.820 So we got that court order.

00:29:50.820 We used that to get Andrew Lawton into the debate, to get you into the debate.

00:29:54.820 In 2021, they actually let True North in so we didn't have to sue.

00:29:58.820 Rebel was not allowed in.

00:29:59.820 They sued again.

00:30:00.820 They got in.

00:30:01.820 And so this time around, the Debates Commission just didn't even bother trying to block us.

00:30:05.820 They saw the writing on the wall that the courts, the judges, as much as I often disagree with what happens in courts in Canada, this time they got it right.

00:30:14.820 They made the right decision saying, in a free society, Canada is still a free society.

00:30:17.820 It's still a democracy.

00:30:18.820 We do have freedom of the press.

00:30:19.820 These are journalists.

00:30:20.820 You must let them in.

00:30:22.820 And this, you know, 364 days a year, we don't get in.

00:30:26.820 The one day a year, and it's not even per year because it's every four years or every two years whenever there's an election,

00:30:31.820 we have a court-ordered paper saying that we are accredited journalists.

00:30:34.820 Let us in.

00:30:35.820 And so they did.

00:30:36.820 And last night, it was actually wonderful to see.

00:30:39.820 You know, the debate itself was kind of predictable.

00:30:41.820 They spent like half the time talking about the environment.

00:30:44.820 They spent a full ten minutes, by the way, talking about abortion, right?

00:30:47.820 So here they are saying that in Canada, we shouldn't have to talk about social issues during a campaign.

00:30:53.820 And yet they're happily taking ten minutes above the debate to talk about an issue that, you know, much to my disappointment,

00:31:00.820 all of the parties have the exact same view and no one's going to change any law.

00:31:03.820 It shouldn't even be an election issue.

00:31:05.820 But anyway, there were a lot of independent reporters.

00:31:08.820 There were a lot of independent journalists there, not just from The Rebel, True North and Juno News.

00:31:13.820 There were a couple of other ones, French language ones, groups on the left that I hadn't heard of before.

00:31:18.820 And they were actually the best questions.

00:31:19.820 The questions that the legacy media were asking were literally the same things that were covered in the debate.

00:31:24.820 They were just asking the questions again for some reason.

00:31:27.820 Whereas the independent media brought new ideas, fresh energy, a different perspective.

00:31:32.820 Again, to me, this is this is like what the purpose of the media is.

00:31:38.820 What do you think about all that?

00:31:39.820 Yeah.

00:31:40.820 That one person said that this is the death of the Debates Commission.

00:31:43.820 You know, I don't think that the liberals are going to be happy with this.

00:31:47.820 But I think that it's kind of missing the point here.

00:31:50.820 I think this is the death of the legacy media, or at least the beginning of it.

00:31:54.820 Because our viewership is huge.

00:31:58.820 Our engagement is high.

00:32:00.820 And our questions are great.

00:32:02.820 What we did was more effective at getting answers for Canadians than anything Rosemary Barton did all day, all week.

00:32:09.820 Probably the whole campaign.

00:32:11.820 Nothing received more traction than what we just did.

00:32:14.820 And, you know, I think that it might be topped by tonight.

00:32:17.820 See what happens.

00:32:18.820 It's going to be an absolute gong show tonight.

00:32:21.820 I'm really excited to see what happens.

00:32:24.820 And I, you know, I'm preparing my questions now.

00:32:27.820 It all depends on which leader we get, because it's kind of, it's kind of random how they open the gates and let a leader out.

00:32:33.820 You're not sure where you're going to be in line.

00:32:35.820 And we'll see, I guess, what happens.

00:32:38.820 But it's going to be a rodeo.

00:32:40.820 I think that it is going to show, again, that the mainstream media can't be trusted with the truth.

00:32:46.820 They can't be trusted to hold leaders accountable because they are built to be machines that siphon grant money away from the federal government.

00:32:55.820 That is all they exist to do.

00:32:57.820 Their corporate structure is designed for it.

00:33:00.820 They do it well, and they're desperate to keep it running, to keep filling their machine with the fuel of taxpayers' dollars.

00:33:07.820 So, you know, I don't expect any tough questions from them.

00:33:10.820 There's a few.

00:33:11.820 I mean, there's a few at the CBC.

00:33:13.820 They're not going to be let in the question line because only one outlet, like every outlet only gets one question, except for Rebel, which has an exemption.

00:33:20.820 I don't think any tough questions are going to be asked by the legacy media, by the mainstream media.

00:33:25.820 I don't hold high hopes.

00:33:27.820 If they do, it's just going to be finding, you know, Pierre's worst moment in the debate and rehashing it.

00:33:32.820 That is all they will do.

00:33:34.820 You can bet money on that.

00:33:36.820 That's what they'll do.

00:33:37.820 Because, you know, whatever the weakest point is, they'll find it and they'll exploit it because their goal is to stop Pierre Paulia from winning.

00:33:44.820 And our goal is to get answers for Canadians, which is what journalists used to do.

00:33:49.820 You know, this is this is sort of like old style journalism where the goal wasn't to persuade people one way or the other.

00:33:57.820 It was to get answers.

00:33:59.820 And the leaders will persuade people themselves.

00:34:02.820 They'll do their job.

00:34:03.820 Mark Carney's answer on gender spoke for itself.

00:34:06.820 Maybe some far left extremists who, you know, were supporting his party because they wanted to stop the Conservatives might realize that, you know, Stephen Harper chose Mark Carney for a reason, because he wasn't some radical SJW.

00:34:20.820 And these people who naturally want to support the NDP and these left wing extremist causes, maybe they're going to be dissuaded from it.

00:34:27.820 It's not our job.

00:34:28.820 You know, frankly, some people saying that we didn't move the needle at all.

00:34:31.820 It's it's they're they're kind of telling on themselves a little bit in the mainstream media that they think that the media's job is to move the dial and is to convince people that, you know, orange man bad, blue man good or red man good.

00:34:45.820 It's that's not the case.

00:34:47.820 Our goal is to get answers.

00:34:48.820 That's it.

00:34:49.820 That's it.

00:34:50.820 Exactly.

00:34:51.820 Yeah.

00:34:52.820 Like the people that said that we were asking bad faith questions, I generally don't understand.

00:34:55.820 Like, I think that the questions were just motivated by an interest in what the prime minister will say.

00:35:00.820 And that should be what's motivated all journalists.

00:35:03.820 Really looking forward to tonight.

00:35:05.820 I do want to make one point.

00:35:07.820 The debate itself, like I said, it was, you know, I thought I thought Pierre did really well.

00:35:12.820 It was very jarring to have to watch a debate through translators.

00:35:15.820 I didn't like the voices that they chose.

00:35:17.820 Like both Pierre Polyev and Jagmeet Singh had like very annoying voiced translators.

00:35:22.820 And the only thing I could really exactly like him, though, did you notice that?

00:35:26.820 I did.

00:35:27.820 Yeah.

00:35:28.820 And then Yves Francois Blanchet had this like beautiful British accent.

00:35:31.820 So he he got the best voice in the in the translators.

00:35:34.820 But basically, like you could only kind of judge it by how they looked.

00:35:37.820 And I thought that Pierre Polyev looked very confident.

00:35:40.820 I think that he was hitting the right notes.

00:35:42.820 And it seemed to me that Mark Carney just looked weak and uncomfortable.

00:35:45.820 He made a couple of blunders.

00:35:46.820 Like he said that he was going to continue to support UNRWA, which is a very discredited global aid organization that has been infiltrated by Hamas.

00:35:56.820 The framing of the questions themselves were also like everything was focused on Trump.

00:36:01.820 And then they spent a very long time talking about the environment when they finally got to talk about immigration.

00:36:05.820 The way the question was framed, they literally asked whether Canada should accept refugees from the United States because of Trump.

00:36:12.820 That was the immigration question.

00:36:14.820 Like we have a totally broken immigration system that has been destroyed and pillaged from 10 years of Justin Trudeau.

00:36:18.820 That is a root cause of so many other social problems that we have and economic problems in our country.

00:36:23.820 And yet the way that CBC debate framed it was literally can people from Haiti who don't feel safe in the United States under President Trump come to Canada.

00:36:32.820 It did give Pierre Polyev an opportunity to shine and to point out Mark Carney's radical position with the Century Initiative and 100 million.

00:36:40.820 I don't know that many Canadians had heard that before.

00:36:42.820 But interestingly, Kian, they've announced that they have removed immigration from the English debate tonight.

00:36:47.820 So French Canadians and Quebecers are allowed to talk about immigration.

00:36:51.820 English Canadians are not. 0.99

00:36:53.820 And so, you know, this is the thing about these government debates is what they omit is just as important as what they don't,

00:36:59.820 which means all the more likely that the independent media asking questions are going to want to go there because the mainstream media censors it and they don't allow these questions to take place.

00:37:08.820 So we will be back tonight, folks, 6.30 p.m.

00:37:11.820 We are doing our live stream.

00:37:13.820 The English debate starts at 7 p.m. Eastern, and then it will be two hours.

00:37:18.820 So the post-debate scrums, that's the part you're going to want to grab your popcorn and tune in to see what kind of questions get put to the leaders.

00:37:27.820 I wonder if they'll pull some shenanigans, Kian, to try to prevent the independent press from asking questions of the leader.

00:37:34.820 I don't know that they can, but I feel like they're going to try.

00:37:36.820 So we're going to want to watch that part, and then we'll be back after all of that with more post-debate analysis.

00:37:43.820 So I hope you will tune in.

00:37:45.820 Kian, thanks so much for your time, and thanks for your work, and good luck tonight.

00:37:48.820 Thank you.

00:37:49.820 All right, folks, we will be back at 6.30.

00:37:52.820 Thanks so much for tuning in.

00:37:54.820 Don't forget to head on over to JunoNews.com and become a subscriber.

00:37:58.820 Join the movement.

00:37:59.820 Join the independent journalists and help us support what we do.

00:38:03.820 So that's all the time we have for today.

00:38:05.820 Thank you so much.

00:38:06.820 I'm Candace Malcolm.

00:38:07.820 This is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:38:08.820 And God bless.

00:38:09.820 .

The Candice Malcolm Show - April 17, 2025

Keean Bexte and Candice Malcolm REACT to French Debate, Scrum, CBC MELTDOWN

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